“Here we go.”
He stepped back out of the closet holding the wooden gun box.
“Bingo,” I said. “You found an empty gun box. You must be a detective.”
Lankford shook the box in his hands before putting it down on the bed. Either he was trying to play with me or the box had a solid heft to it. I felt a little charge go down the back of my neck as I realized that Roulet could have just as easily snuck back into my house to return the gun. It would have been the perfect hiding place for it. The last place I might think to check again once I had determined that the gun was gone. I remembered the odd smile on Roulet’s face when I had told him I wanted my gun back. Was he smiling because I already had the gun back?
Lankford flipped the box’s latch and lifted the top. He pulled back the oilcloth covering. The cork cutout which once held Mickey Cohen’s gun was still empty. I breathed out so heavily it almost came out as a sigh.
“What did I tell you?” I said quickly, trying to cover up.
“Yeah, what did you tell us,” Lankford said. “Heidi, you got a bag? We’re going to take the box.”
I looked at Sobel. She didn’t look like a Heidi to me. I wondered if it was some sort of a squad room nickname. Or maybe it was the reason she didn’t put her first name on her business card. It didn’t sound homicide tough.
“In the car,” she said.
“Go get it,” Lankford said.
“You are going to take an empty gun box?” I asked. “What good does it do you?”
“All part of the chain of evidence, Counselor. You should know that. Besides, it will come in handy, since I have a feeling we’ll never find the gun.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe handy in your dreams. The box is evidence of nothing.”
“It’s evidence that you had Mickey Cohen’s gun. Says it right on this little brass plaque your daddy or somebody had made.”
“So fucking what?”
“Well, I just made a call while I was out on your front porch, Haller. See, we had somebody checking on Mickey Cohen’s self-defense case. Turns out that over there in LAPD’s evidence archive they still have all the ballistic evidence from that case. That’s a lucky break for us, the case being, what, fifty years old?”
I understood immediately. They would take the bullet slugs and casings from the Cohen case and compare them with the same evidence recovered in the Levin case. They would match the Levin murder to Mickey Cohen’s gun which they would then tie to me with the gun box and the state’s AFS computer. I doubted Roulet could have realized how the police would be able to make a case without even having the gun when he thought out his scheme to control me.
I stood there silently. Sobel left the room without a glance at me and Lankford looked up from the box at me with a killer smile.
“What’s the matter, Counselor?” he asked. “Evidence got your tongue?”
I finally was able to speak.
“How long will ballistics take?” I managed to ask.
“Hey, for you, we’re going to put a rush on it. So get out there and enjoy yourself while you can. But don’t leave town.”
He laughed, almost giddy with himself.
“Man, I thought they only said that in movies. But there, I just said it! I wish my partner had been here.”
Sobel came back in with a large brown bag and a roll of red evidence tape. I watched her put the gun box into the bag and then seal it with the tape. I wondered how much time I had and if the wheels had just come off of everything I had put into motion. I started to feel as empty as the wooden box Sobel had just sealed inside the brown paper bag.
THIRTY-TWO
Fernando Valenzuela lived out in Valencia. From my home it was easily an hour’s drive north in the last remnants of rush-hour traffic. Valenzuela had moved out of Van Nuys a few years earlier because his three daughters were nearing high school age and he feared for their safety and education. He moved into a neighborhood filled with people who had also fled from the city and his commute went from five minutes to forty-five. But he was happy. His house was nicer and his children safer. He lived in a Spanish-style house with a red tile roof in a planned community full of Spanish-style houses with red tile roofs. It was more than a bail bondsman could ever dream of having, but it came with a stiff monthly price tag.
It was almost nine by the time I got there. I pulled up to the garage, which had been left open. One space was taken by a minivan and the other by a pickup. On the floor between the pickup and a fully equipped tool bench was a large cardboard box that said SONY on it. It was long and thin. I looked closer and saw it was a box for a fifty-inch plasma TV. I got out and went to the front door and knocked. Valenzuela answered after a long wait.
“Mick, what are you doing up here?”
“Do you know your garage door is open?”
“Holy shit! I just had a plasma delivered.”
He pushed by me and ran across the yard to look into the garage. I closed his front door and followed him to the garage. When I got there he was standing next to his TV, smiling.
“Oh, man, you know that would’ve never happened in Van Nuys,” he said. “That sucker woulda been long gone. Come on, we’ll go in through here.”
He headed toward a door that would take us from the garage into the house. He hit a switch that made the garage door start to roll down.
“Hey, Val, wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s just talk out here. It’s more private.”
“But Maria probably wants to say hello.”
“Maybe next time.”
He came back over to me, concern in his eyes.
“What’s up, Boss?”
“What’s up is I spent some time today with the cops working on Raul’s murder. They said they cleared Roulet on it because of the ankle bracelet.”
Valenzuela nodded vigorously.
“Yeah, yeah, they came to see me a few days after it happened. I showed them the system and how it works and I pulled up Roulet’s track for that day. They saw he was at work. And I also showed them the other bracelet I got and explained how it couldn’t be tampered with. It’s got a mass detector. Bottom line is you can’t take it off. It would know and then I would know.”
I leaned back against the pickup and folded my arms.
“So did those two cops ask where you were on that Saturday?”
It hit Valenzuela like a punch.
“What did you say, Mick?”
My eyes lowered to the plasma TV box and then back up to his.
“Somehow, some way, he killed Raul, Val. Now my ass is on the line and I want to know how he did it.”
“Mick, listen to me, he’s clear. I’m telling you, that bracelet didn’t come off his ankle. The machine doesn’t lie.”
“Yeah, I know, the machine doesn’t lie…”
After a moment he got it.
“What are you saying, Mick?”
He stepped in front of me, his body posture stiffening aggressively. I stopped leaning on the truck and dropped my hands to my sides.
“I’m asking, Val. Where were you on that Tuesday morning?”
“You son of a bitch, how could you ask me that?”
He had moved into a fight stance. I was momentarily taken off guard as I thought about him calling me what I had called Roulet earlier in the day.
Valenzuela suddenly lunged at me and shoved me hard against his truck. I shoved him back harder and he went backwards into the TV box. It tipped over and hit the floor with a loud, heavy whump and then he came down on it in a seated position. There was a sharp snap sound from inside the box.
“Oh, fuck!” he cried. “Oh, fuck! You broke the screen!”
“You pushed me, Val. I pushed back.”
“Oh, fuck!”
He scrambled to the side of the box and tried to lift it back up but it was too heavy and unwieldy. I walked over to the other side and helped him right it. As the box came upright we heard small bits of material inside it slide down. It sounded like glass.
“Motherfuck!” Valenzuela yelled.
The door leading into the house opened and his wife, Maria, looked out.
“Hi, Mickey. Val, what is all the noise?”
“Just go inside,” her husband ordered.
“Well, what is -”
“Shut the fuck up and go inside!”
She paused for a moment, staring at us, then closed the door. I heard her lock it. It looked like Valenzuela was sleeping with the broken TV tonight. I looked back at him. His mouth was spread in shock.
“That was eight thousand dollars,” he whispered.
“They make TVs that cost eight thousand dollars?”
I was shocked. What was the world coming to?
“That was with a discount.”
“Val, where’d you get the money for an eight-thousand-dollar TV?”
He looked at me and the fire came back.
“Where the fuck do you think? Business, man. Thanks to Roulet I’m having a hell of a year. But goddamn, Mick, I didn’t cut him loose from the bracelet so he could go out and kill Raul. I knew Raul just as long as you did. I did not do that. I did not put the bracelet on and wear it while he went to kill Raul. And I did not go and kill Raul for him for a fucking TV. If you can’t believe that, then just get the hell out of here and out of my life!”
He said it all with the desperate intensity of a wounded animal. A flash thought of Jesus Menendez came to my mind. I had failed to see the innocence in his pleas. I didn’t want that to ever happen again.
“Okay, Val,” I said.
I walked over to the house door and pushed the button that raised the garage door. When I turned back I saw he had taken a box cutter from the tool bench and was cutting the tape on the top of the TV box. It looked like he was trying to confirm what we already knew about the plasma. I walked past him and out of the garage.
“I’ll split it with you, Val,” I said. “I’ll have Lorna send you a check in the morning.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll tell them it was delivered this way.”
I got to my car door and looked back at him.
“Then give me a call when they arrest you for fraud. After you bail yourself out.”
I got in the Lincoln and backed out of the driveway. When I glanced back into the garage, I saw Valenzuela had stopped cutting open the box and was just standing there looking at me.
Traffic going back into the city was light and I made good time. I was just coming in through the front door when the house phone started to ring. I grabbed it in the kitchen, thinking maybe it was Valenzuela calling to tell me he was taking his business to another defense pro. At the moment I didn’t care.
Instead, it was Maggie McPherson.
“Everything all right?” I asked. She usually didn’t call so late.
“Fine.”
“Where’s Hayley?”
“Asleep. I didn’t want to call until she went down.”
“What’s up?”
“There was a strange rumor about you floating around the office today.”
“You mean the one about me being Raul Levin’s murderer?”
“Haller, is this serious?”
The kitchen was too small for a table and chairs. I couldn’t go far with the phone cord tether so I hoisted myself up onto the counter. Through the window over the sink I could see the lights of downtown twinkling in the distance and a glow on the horizon that I knew came from Dodger Stadium.
“I would say, yes, the situation is serious. I am being set up to take the fall for Raul’s murder.”
“Oh my God, Michael, how is this possible?”
“A lot of different ingredients-evil client, cop with a grudge, stupid lawyer, add sugar and spice and everything nice.”
“Is it Roulet? Is he the one?”
“I can’t talk about my clients with you, Mags.”
“Well, what are you planning to do?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. I’ll be okay.”
“What about Hayley?”
I knew what she was saying. She was warning me to keep it away from Hayley. Don’t let her go to school and hear kids talking about her father the murder suspect with a face and name splashed across the news.
“Hayley will be fine. She’ll never know. Nobody will ever know if I play this thing right.”
She didn’t say anything and there was nothing else I could do to reassure her. I changed the subject. I tried to sound confident, even cheerful.
“How did your boy Minton look after court today?”
She didn’t answer at first, probably reluctant to change the subject.
“I don’t know. He looked fine. But Smithson sent an observer up because it’s his first solo.”
I nodded. I was counting on Smithson, who ran the DA’s Van Nuys branch, having sent somebody to keep a watch on Minton.
“Any feedback?”
“No, not yet. Nothing that I heard. Look, Haller, I am really worried about this. The rumor was that you were served a search warrant in the courthouse. Is that true?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. I’m telling you, I have things under control. It will all come out okay. I promise.”
I knew I had not quelled her fears. She was thinking about our daughter and the possible scandal. She was probably also thinking a little bit about herself and what having an ex-husband disbarred or accused of murder would do to her chances of advancement.
“Besides, if it all goes to shit, you’re still going to be my first customer, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Lincoln Lawyer Limousine Service. You’re in, right?”
“Haller, it doesn’t sound like this is a time to be making jokes.”
“It’s no joke, Maggie. I’ve been thinking about quitting. Even before all of this bullshit came up. It’s like I told you that night, I can’t do this anymore.”
There was a long silence before she responded.
“Whatever you want to do is going to be fine by me and Hayley.”
I nodded.
“You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”
She sighed into the phone.
“I don’t know how you do it, Haller.”
“Do what?”
“You’re a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wives and an eight-year-old daughter. And we all still love you.”
Now I was silent. Despite everything I smiled.
“Thank you, Maggie McFierce,” I finally said. “Good night.”
And I hung up the phone.
Tuesday, May 24
THIRTY-THREE
The second day of trial began with a forthwith to the judge’s chambers for Minton and me. Judge Fullbright wanted only to speak to me but the rules of trial made it improper for her to meet privately with me about any matter and exclude the prosecution. Her chambers were spacious, with a desk and separate seating area surrounded by three walls of shelves containing law books. She told us to sit in the seats in front of her desk.
“Mr. Minton,” she began, “I can’t tell you not to listen but I’m going to have a conversation with Mr. Haller that I don’t expect you to join or interrupt. It doesn’t concern you or, as far as I know, the Roulet case.”
Minton, taken by surprise, didn’t quite know how to react other than to drop his jaw a couple inches and let light into his mouth. The judge turned in her desk chair toward me and clasped her hands together on the desk.
“Mr. Haller, is there anything you need to bring up with me? Keeping in mind that you are sitting next to a prosecutor.”
“No, Judge, everything’s fine. Sorry if you were bothered yesterday.”
I did my best to put a rueful smile on my face, as if to show the search warrant had been nothing more than an embarrassing inconvenience.
“It is hardly a bother, Mr. Haller. We’ve invested a lot of time on this case. The jury, the prosecution, all of us. I am hoping that it is not going to be for naught. I don’t want to do this again. My calendar is already overflowing.”
“Excuse me, Judge Fullbright,” Minton said. “Could I just ask what -”
“No, you may not,” she said, cutting him off. “What we are talking about does not concern the trial other than the timing of it. If Mr. Haller is assuring me that we don’t have a problem, then I will take him at his word. You need no further explanation than that.”
She looked pointedly at me.
“Do I have your word on this, Mr. Haller?”
I hesitated before nodding. What she was telling me was that there would be hell to pay if I broke my word and the Glendale investigation caused a disruption or mistrial in the Roulet case.
“You’ve got my word,” I said.
She immediately stood up and turned toward the hat rack in the corner. Her black robe hung there on a hanger.
“Okay, then, gentlemen, let’s get to it. We’ve got a jury waiting.”
Minton and I left the chambers and entered the courtroom through the clerk’s station. Roulet was seated in the defendant’s chair and waiting.
“What the hell was that all about?” Minton whispered to me.
He was playing dumb. He had to have heard the same rumors my ex-wife had picked up in the halls of the DA’s office.
“Nothing, Ted. Just some bullshit involving another case of mine. You going to wrap it up today?”
“Depends on you. The longer you take, the longer I take cleaning up the bullshit you sling.”
“Bullshit, huh? You’re bleeding to death and don’t even know it.”
He smiled confidently at me.
“I don’t think so.”
“Call it death by a thousand razor blades, Ted. One doesn’t do it. They all do it. Welcome to felony practice.”
I separated from him and went to the defense table. As soon as I sat down, Roulet was in my ear.
“What was that about with the judge?” he whispered.
“Nothing. She was just warning me about how I handle the victim on cross.”
“Who, the woman? She actually called her a victim?”
“Louis, first of all, keep your voice down. And second, she is the victim in this thing. You may have that rare ability to convince yourself of almost anything, but we still-no, make that I-still need to convince the jury.”
He took the rebuke like I was blowing bubbles in his face and moved on.
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said she isn’t going to allow me a lot of freedom in cross-examination. She reminded me that Regina Campo is a victim.”
“I’m counting on you to rip her to shreds, to borrow a quote from you on the day we met.”
“Yeah, well, things are a lot different than on the day we met, aren’t they? And your little scheme with my gun is about to blow up in my face. And I’m telling you right now, I’m not going down for it. If I have to drive people to the airport the rest of my life, I will do that and do it gladly if it’s my only way out from this. You understand, Louis?”
“I understand, Mick,” he said glibly. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re a smart man.”
I turned and looked at him. Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything further. The bailiff called the court to order and Judge Fullbright took the bench.
Minton’s first witness of the day was LAPD Detective Martin Booker. He was a solid witness for the prosecution. A rock. His answers were clear and concise and given without hesitation. Booker introduced the key piece of evidence, the knife with my client’s initials on it, and under Minton’s questioning he took the jury through his entire investigation of the attack on Regina Campo.
He testified that on the night of March 6 he had been working night duty out of Valley Bureau in Van Nuys. He was called to Regina Campo’s apartment by the West Valley Division watch commander, who believed, after being briefed by his patrol officers, that the attack on Campo merited immediate attention from an investigator. Booker explained that the six detective bureaus in the Valley were only staffed during daytime hours. He said the night-duty detective was a quick-response position and often assigned cases of a pressing nature.
“What made this case of pressing nature, Detective?” Minton asked.
“The injuries to the victim, the arrest of a suspect and the belief that a greater crime had probably been averted,” Booker answered.
“That greater crime being what?”
“Murder. It sounded like the guy was planning to kill her.”
I could have objected but I planned to exploit the exchange on cross-examination, so I let it go.
Minton walked Booker through the investigative steps he took at the crime scene and later while interviewing Campo as she was being treated at a hospital.
“Before you got to the hospital you had been briefed by Officers Maxwell and Santos on what the victim had reported had happened, correct?”
“Yes, they gave me an overview.”
“Did they tell you that the victim was engaged in selling sex to men for a living?”
“No, they didn’t.”
“When did you find that out?”
“Well, I was getting a pretty good sense of it when I was in her apartment and I saw some of the property she had there.”
“What property?”
“Things I would describe as sex aids, and in one of the bedrooms, there was a closet that only had negligees and clothing of a sexually provocative nature in it. There was also a television in that room and a collection of pornographic tapes in the drawers beneath it. I had been told that she did not have a roommate but it looked to me like both bedrooms were in active use. I started to think that one room was hers, like it was the one she slept in when she was alone, and the other was for her professional activities.”
“A trick pad?”
“You could call it that.”
“Did it change your opinion of her as a victim of this attack?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“And why not?”
“Because anybody can be a victim. Prostitute or pope, doesn’t matter. A victim is a victim.”
Spoken just as rehearsed, I thought. Minton made a check mark on his pad and moved on.
“Now, when you got to the hospital, did you ask the victim about your theory in regard to her bedrooms and what she did for a living?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She flat out said she was a working girl. She didn’t try to hide it.”
“Did anything she said to you differ from the accounts of the attack you had already gathered at the crime scene?”
“No, not at all. She told me she opened the door to the defendant and he immediately punched her in the face and drove her backwards into the apartment. He assaulted her further and produced a knife. He told her he was going to rape her and then kill her.”
Minton continued to probe the investigation in more detail and to the point of boring the jury. When I was not writing down questions to ask Booker during cross, I watched the jurors and saw their attention lag under the weight of so much information.
Finally, after ninety minutes of direct examination it was my turn with the police detective. My goal was to get in and get out. While Minton performed the whole case autopsy, I only wanted to go in and scrape cartilage out of the knees.
“Detective Booker, did Regina Campo explain why she lied to the police?”
“She didn’t lie to me.”
“Maybe not to you but she told the first officers on the scene, Maxwell and Santos, that she did not know why the suspect had come to her apartment, didn’t she?”
“I wasn’t present when they spoke to her so I can’t testify to that. I do know that she was scared, that she had just been beaten and threatened with rape and death at the time of the first interview.”
“So you are saying that under those circumstances it is acceptable to lie to the police.”
“No, I did not say that.”
I checked my notes and moved on. I wasn’t going for a linear continuum of questions. I was potshotting, trying to keep him off balance.
“Did you catalog the clothing you found in the bedroom you said Ms. Campo used for her prostitution business?”
“No, I did not. It was just an observation I made. It was not important to the case.”
“Would any of the outfits you saw in the closet have been appropriate to sadomasochistic sexual activities?”
“I wouldn’t know that. I am not an expert in that field.”
“How about the pornographic videos? Did you write down the titles?”
“No, I did not. Again, I did not believe that it was pertinent to the investigation of who had brutally assaulted this woman.”
“Do you recall if the subject matter of any of the videos involved sadomasochism or bondage or anything of that nature?”
“No, I do not.”
“Now, did you instruct Ms. Campo to get rid of those tapes and the clothing from the closet before members of Mr. Roulet’s defense team could view the apartment?”
“I certainly did not.”
I checked that one off my list and moved on.
“Have you ever spoken to Mr. Roulet about what happened in Ms. Campo’s apartment that night?”
“No, he lawyered up before I got to him.”
“Do you mean he exercised his constitutional right to remain silent?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he did.”
“So, as far as you know, he never spoke to the police about what happened.”
“That is correct.”
“In your opinion, was Ms. Campo struck with great force?”
“I would say so, yes. Her face was very badly cut and swollen.”
“Then please tell the jury about the impact injuries you found on Mr. Roulet’s hands.”
“He had wrapped a cloth around his fist to protect it. There were no injuries on his hands that I could see.”
“Did you document this lack of injury?”
Booker looked puzzled by the question.
“No,” he said.
“So you had Ms. Campo’s injuries documented by photographs but you didn’t see the need to document Mr. Roulet’s lack of injuries, correct?”
“It didn’t seem to me to be necessary to photograph something that wasn’t there.”
“How do you know he wrapped his fist in a cloth to protect it?”
“Ms. Campo told me she saw that his hand was wrapped right before he punched her at the door.”
“Did you find this cloth he supposedly wrapped his hand in?”
“Yes, it was in the apartment. It was a napkin, like from a restaurant. It had her blood on it.”
“Did it have Mr. Roulet’s blood on it?”
“No.”
“Was there anything that identified it as belonging to the defendant?”
“No.”
“So we have Ms. Campo’s word for it, right?”
“That’s right.”
I let some time pass while I scribbled a note on my pad. I then continued to question the detective.
“Detective, when did you learn that Louis Roulet denied assaulting or threatening Ms. Campo and that he would be vigorously defending himself against the charges?”
“That would have been when he hired you, I guess.”
There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom.
“Did you pursue other explanations for Ms. Campo’s injuries?”
“No, she told me what happened. I believed her. He beat her and was going to -”
“Thank you, Detective Booker. Just try to answer the question I ask.”
“I was.”
“If you looked for no other explanation because you believed the word of Ms. Campo, is it safe to say that this whole case relies upon her word and what she said occurred in her apartment on the night of March sixth?”
Booker deliberated a moment. He knew I was leading him into a trap of his own words. As the saying goes, there is no trap so deadly as the one you set for yourself.
“It’s not just her word,” he said after thinking he saw a way out. “There is physical evidence. The knife. Her injuries. More than just her word on this.”
He nodded affirmatively.
“But doesn’t the state’s explanation for her injuries and the other evidence begin with her telling of what happened?”
“You could say that, yes,” he said reluctantly.
“She is the tree on which all of these fruits grow, is she not?”
“I probably wouldn’t use those words.”
“Then what words would you use, Detective?”
I had him now. Booker was literally squirming in his seat. Minton stood up and objected, saying I was badgering the witness. It must have been something he had seen on TV or in a movie. He was told to sit down by the judge.
“You can answer the question, Detective,” the judge said.
“What was the question?” Booker asked, trying to buy some time.
“You disagreed with me when I characterized Ms. Campo as the tree from which all the evidence in the case grows,” I said. “If I am wrong, how would you describe her position in this case?”
Booker raised his hands in a quick gesture of surrender.
“She’s the victim! Of course she’s important because she told us what happened. We have to rely on her to set the course of the investigation.”
“You rely on her for quite a bit in this case, don’t you? Victim and chief witness against the defendant, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Who else saw the defendant attack Ms. Campo?”
“Nobody else.”
I nodded, to underline the answer for the jury. I looked over and exchanged eye contact with those in the front row.
“Okay, Detective,” I said. “I want to ask you about Charles Talbot now. How did you find out about this man?”
“Uh, the prosecutor, Mr. Minton, told me to find him.”
“And do you know how Mr. Minton came to know about his existence?”
“I believe you were the one who informed him. You had a videotape from a bar that showed him with the victim a couple hours before the attack.”
I knew this could be the point to introduce the video but I wanted to wait on that. I wanted the victim on the stand when I showed the tape to the jury.
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